The Funny Side
by Vaetra
Summary: Their life, when he thought about it, had been like a twisted nursery rhyme. You wanna know how I got these scars? M for blood.
1. Chapter 1

_My first ever Batman (Dark Knight) fic and it's a bit scary. I realize that the Joker just probably makes up all the stories about how he got his scars, but I decided to take the one about his wife and write about it. There are some allusions to an abusive father, but in this story, that's not how he got the scars. I guess I just like the idea that he was in love once. (Oh, and I believe the general consensus is that the Joker's original name was Jack Napier, so that's what I'm going with. It's just coincidence that it happens to be the same name as in the nursery rhyme, which I thought fit with this story very well. I'm not naming his wife, but I'm pretty sure she's not called Jill.)_

_Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water_

_Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after_

Everyone told them they got married too quickly. They had only known each other for six months, and neither had much money, or a steady job. If he could support her or if she couldn't bring in any income herself, everyone said, their love would quickly turn to resentment, even hate. Money, apparently, not only made the world go round, but it also kept people together, like papery green glue. They laughed like little kids at that, like it was the funniest thing in the world. Drunk on each other's presence, they were in no mood to listen to the concerned opinions of "everyone."

Anyway, that word only encompassed several well-meaning acquaintances, since she had few friends, and he had none at all. Life hadn't been easy for either of them, and maybe that was why they had clung to each other with such devotion. They had both had fiendish fathers—drinkers, who came home every night with obscenities on their lips and violence in their eyes. They had both grown up without much money, and had both been the outcasts at school, the lunatics, the loners. The freaks. Finding someone who cared, who understood and loved them had seemed almost unreal to the pair, like it was a thing that belonged in someone else's life.

He'd never been a romantic, had never even really believed in love before, not after everything he'd seen, but he wasn't so cynical that he couldn't recognize when he had something precious, and he understood that this might never come again. He told her that he wasn't a good man, that he wasn't exceptionally kind or honest—(though even then, those things didn't bother _him_)—but that he loved her, as much as he was able to, and that he wanted to stay with her for as long as he ever lived. It was the purest, most unguarded thing he ever said—to her or anyone else. She sniffed, nodded, kissed him so hard he nearly fell backwards, and that was that.

They were happy for a long time, longer than anyone had predicted they would be. Things weren't perfect, but they were good. Neither of them seemed to be able to keep a job for very long, but more work always came along, even if it didn't last. If she stopped to think about it, it was miraculous that they managed to get by on so little, but he didn't want to trouble her with boastful tales of his excursions, the clown mask he wore to hide his face, the gun he kept concealed in his coat when he went out late at night. They _were_ happy, after all.

--

"Jack…" She placed her hands on his shoulders, turning him away from the kitchen knife he'd been meticulously cleaning. "Why so serious, Jack?"

He relaxed as her fingers trailed across his chest, his eyes softening as they met hers. He really did love her. "I'm not serious."

"You are. You need to smile more, hun." She stretched the corners of his mouth upwards with her thumbs, giggling. Her hands were warm against his skin, and he shivered and pulled her closer.

"I got a job today," she mumbled into his shirt.

"Yeah?"

She nodded. "Nursing. It pays well." She tilted her heat to look up at him, propping her chin against his chest. "The graveyard shift. Twelve to eight. It's the best I could get."

He nodded slowly. "Okay."

"Really?"

He tucked her head under his chin and stroked her reddish brown hair. "Yeah…" He glanced at his coat, which was slung over the back of the chair, his eyes lingering on the barely visible bulge in the right pocket. It would certainly make _his_ job easier.

--

Working the night shift made things easier for her, too. Gotham's casino was only a few blocks from the hospital, and now she didn't have to worry about waking her husband when she snuck out at night to play cards. She was good at poker. Her father used to play it with her, on the occasional night when he wasn't completely wasted. She'd never felt the need to explain to Jack just how they were still always able to pay the bills, so when her luck suddenly started to turn sour, she knew that this was a problem she would have to deal with alone.

--

Jack lay struggling at the bottom of a thick, murky nightmare, sweat standing out on his brow, his eyes screwed shut against countless imaginary horrors. He was drowning—or falling, he wasn't sure which, surrounded by darkness and sickening mad laughter. There were half-shadowed faces with bloody red smiles and dead black eyes, and his father's voice was screaming at him.

There was the noise of a slamming door and he jerked awake, gasping like he'd just surfaced from deep water. Footsteps echoed in the hallway, along with an odd, muffled noise, like someone choking to death and trying to be quiet about it. Jack sat up, wiping sweat out of his eyes and squinting at the crack of light that appeared under the door.

"Babe? Is that you?"

There was a tiny sob from the other side of the door. He stood up and made his way to the crack of light, already reaching for the doorknob. He could hear sniffling, and he started to ask if she was all right as the door swung open, when the light flooded his senses, and he stopped dead. It took him a moment to even recognize her as his wife. Her face was pale, gaunt, and covered in streaks of drying blood, dark red turning to black at the edges. Her eyes were wide and unseeing.

He rushed forward with a horrified cry and she staggered against him, fingers clenching on his shoulders as though she was afraid she might fly away. He pulled back from her slightly and took her face gingerly in his hands, tilting it up for examination. Her skin looked like a half-used page from a child's coloring book. Clumsy X's were carved across both cheeks, and a long cut started at the bridge of her nose and hooked to fallow the shape of her left eyebrow. Fresh blood was trickling into her eye and she blinked it away, a tear trailing down her cheek, melting the dried gore along her jaw line.

He let out the breath he'd been holding in a horrified hiss. "Oh… oh my god. What _happened_ to you?"

Her face seemed to inwards (which only made the cuts start bleeding again) and she muffled her sob in his shoulder. "Oh, Jack, I'm… I'm so sorry…"

He pulled her close to him and tried to wipe the tears off her cheeks, but it only made the wounds sting worse.


	2. Chapter 2

_And the second installment is up! I'm actually bumping this up to mature because it is, quite frankly, really really bloody. There's also a bit of language and I don't want to get in trouble. So, consider yourself warned. (But seriously, if you couldn't handle a bit of blood, I doubt you'd be a fan of the Joker anyway. :D) Oh, and sort of randomly: I'm really annoyed with for STILL not having a Dark Knight category. I don't know if I should continue to update this story in the Batman category or maybe move it to Batman Begins, where I recently discovered a lot of Dark Knight stories are hiding. Ugh. Whatever. Read on!_

Even with both of their not-exactly-legal means of obtaining extra money, (which they revealed shortly afterwards, to each other's grim acceptance) they still didn't have enough to pay for surgeries. Her cuts healed in thin white scars that crisscrossed her face like slivers of moonlight. He tried to tell her that they didn't make her ugly, that she was still beautiful in spite of the scars—_because_ of them—but she turned away, brushing his hand from her cheek, her eyes glassy with tears.

She tried to shade her face with broad hats, to cover the scars with makeup, but the thing, raised lines still showed through. She became listless, lying in bed for hours at a time, or standing in the bathroom and staring down her reflection in the mirror, as though she thought that if she looked long enough, she could make her skin smooth and perfect again. Jack tried to comfort her, to hold her and tell her it was all right, but she refused to let him near her, saying that he didn't have to pretend to love her after all this.

But the most disturbing thing about the whole affair was the way that their personalities and mannerisms seemed to be slowly shifting. As she grew inconsolable and depressed, he seemed to be getting more and more lighthearted. But it was most definitely not a "good" kind of lighthearted, not at all. It wasn't that suddenly everything was funny; he just could help laughing at it anyway, maybe _because_ it wasn't funny. It wasn't bad to laugh, really—until he realized her couldn't stop.

It was chilling, and at first he frightened even himself when the laughter crept up out of his throat like a disease, worming its way out between his lips to infect the world with this new brand of insanity. She heard him laughing; late at night she would wake to find him lying on his back, giggling senselessly at the ceiling. It disturbed her, of course it did, but then her hand would move almost unconsciously to trace the fine scars her cheek, and her eyes would fill with tears for her own torment, and she would forget the man going mad in the bed beside her.

He wouldn't forget her, though. He turned suddenly to face her, his eyes weirdly emotionless in spite of his wide grin. "Why aren't you laughing?"

She choked. "I…"

"It's funny, isn't it?" He let out another bark of laughter that made her wince. "Don't you think it's just so funny?"

"What? Listen, Jack, just go back to sleep. We'll… we'll talk about this in the morning, okay?"

She sniffed, almost unconsciously, and his eyes snapped back to her from where they had been wandering again to the hilarious ceiling. Her face was still wet with tears and he ran the back of his hand across her cheek. It would have been comforting if he weren't still trembling with manic energy.

"Oh, don't be _sad_, sweetheart. It's all right. You _know _I don't care about the scars. _I don't care._" His voice was a snarl, and his hand was now shaking out of control against her cheek, but she was afraid of what he would do if she pulled away. "I just wish you'd smile more, babe. _I'm_ smiling, so _you_ should too. Those"—he worked the word over in his mouth before spitting it out like a stone—"_scars_ shouldn't come between us. They're… they're…"

He dropped his hand suddenly from her face, his dark eyes wide with excitement. "I'll be right back." And with that, he leapt up and rushed from the room.

The sudden lack of his presence was like turning out all the lights. She was still seeing spots from staring so long into his blinding insanity, but once her eyes adjusted, she wondered if she didn't like it better this way.

--

It wasn't that he thought it would make everything better. Or, well, maybe he had at first, but now, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, a kitchen knife clenched in his white-knuckled fist, his breath coming out in neat little bursts, Jack wasn't thinking anything at all. It was amazing how simple it was to raise the knife—(the same one, he realized with distant amusement, that he used to use for mincing meat)—and dig the sharpened blade into the corner of his mouth.

The pain came when the blood did, rising like a red tide behind his eyes and filling his head with a scarlet sea of agony. He should be screaming—he _could_ feel it, and it _did_ hurt, so much he almost threw up—but the only sound that escaped his blood-slicked lips was a soft chuckle, turning into a whimper as he finished the first sickle-shaped cut, withdrawing the blade from his cheek with a horrible _snick._ His hand was shaking so much that the rip in his cheek was jagged, mapping the route his trembling fingers had taken.

Blood was coursing down his cheek, filling his mouth, soaking the collar of his T-shirt, but he ignored it. He pressed the blade against the inside of his other cheek, his eyes locking on those of his reflection, and was surprised to see that they were still as flat as tarnished coins. He made the second cut with such fervor that as the blade ripped through his skin, he lost his grip on the blood-soaked handle, and the knife went spinning across the room to clatter against the far wall. He did scream this time, though it was almost more like the yelp of a wounded dog. Clenching his eyes shut, Jack gripped the edge of the counter and bowed his head, listening to the fragile sound of his blood dripping into the sink.

He could feel his heart beating frantically, pounding in his ears, and igniting the rips in his face with white-hot pulses of pain. He wished he could make it stop beating.

And then suddenly his eyes were open again and he was laughing harder than ever, and staring again at his reflection, which was now barely recognizable as a human face—soaked in blood as red as henna ink, mouth torn into a gaping hole that consumed the bottom half of it.

Even after he stopped laughing, Jack was still smiling. He always would be, now. Elation rose in his throat. He had to show her this…

She screamed so loudly when she saw him that it took him a moment to realize that there were actual words mixed into the keening. "Jack! _Jack!_ Oh my god, Jack, _what the fuck have you done?!_"

He tried to smile at her, but the torn muscles of his face could no longer manage such an expression. "See?" He choked, blood spilling from his lips and dripping onto the carpet. "Now we match."

And then his eyes rolled back, and he toppled forward onto the bed.

--

When Jack woke up, his mouth didn't hurt anymore. His stomach leaping at this sudden miracle, he reached up a hand (still shaking, goddamn it) and started violently when he felt the uneven flesh of his cheeks, rubbery and numb with anesthetic, held snugly together with neat little stitches. _How cozy…_

He started to giggle, but the action tugged on the thread holding his face together, and his laugh turned quickly into a cry of pain.

She jumped, startled by the noise, and moved back to the side of his bed. He turned his head so he could see her, and was surprised at how dizzy he felt. He must have lost more blood than he'd realized.

She reached out to touch his face, her eyes full of the tenderness he used to know so well, but then she seemed to catch herself, and recoiled before her fingers brushed his skin. "Jack…"

He hated the look in her eyes—pity, mingled with grim determination. The pity disgusted him and the determination frightened him. He knew, from that look, what she was going to do.

And she did, with tears, and the flutter of a kiss on his ruined cheek. But there was steel underneath her crying, and when he heard the door shut behind her, he knew that she wasn't coming back.


	3. Chapter 3

_Okay, I originally meant to make this story just three parts long, but it seems I got a bit carried away, so it'll be at least one chapter longer, or maybe more, depending on how long my imagination continues to come up with all these (increasingly violent) ideas. Anyway, this, and probably the following chapter(s) are going to be a lot more Joker-centric, since I find him a lot more interesting than the nameless wife character. (Though she will not be forgotten!)_

The man in the hospital bed on the other side of the room was looking at him again, shooting what he thought were furtive glances at the other patient in the sterile, white room. Jack rolled his eyes and let his head flop over to one side, so their gazes locked. "It's rude to stare, you know."

The other man looked quickly away and muttered an apology, but Jack kept his eyes trained on him, like a cat that has spotted a bird. He had nothing against this man, whose only sin had been simple curiosity (and perhaps a touch of morbid fascination), but he suddenly wanted to upset him, to watch him squirm, to see what would happen if that stupid little world of his got shaken up like a Christmas snowglobe. Leaning forward, Jack tapped a finger against the corner of his hacked mouth, his eyes full of mock sympathy.

"It's the scars, isn't it?"

The man shook his head quickly, edging surreptitiously towards the edge of his narrow bed.

Jack smiled, the scars stretching with his cheeks, causing him a faint twinge of pain.

They were almost completely healed now, the skin puckering around the grooves of the original incisions, creating a new and gruesome landscape across his cheeks. He didn't need stitches or anesthetics anymore, but still, the doctors told him he wasn't well enough to check out of the hospital yet. He knew, though, that they were more concerned for his mental health than that of his body. They knew the real way he had gotten those scars; _she_ had told them, before she'd left. Now they didn't trust him, afraid of what he might do to himself—or other people—if allowed to go free. They wanted to get him a shrink, but according to policy he had to ask for one himself, and he wouldn't, no matter how strongly it was suggested.

Jack wasn't stupid—he knew that if anyone with any skill were to examine him, they would find enough things wrong with his mind to keep him here for a very long time, or even to get him sent to Arkham. So he would stay here until he could figure out a way to leave, thoroughly unnerving his parade of unfortunate roommates in the meantime. They all requested to be moved within a few days of arriving, and Jack had made a game of it, seeing how quickly he could drive each of them away.

This man had been holding up rather well, though at the moment he was gulping nervously, and wiping sweat from his brow as Jack's murky eyes burned into him.

Jack ran a finger along one of his scars again, smirking. "I be you're wondering how I got them."

"N- no, I"—he stopped as Jack pushed himself up out of his bed and took a not-so-friendly step towards him.

"Are you sure? It's a really _funny _story." He didn't wait for an answer, continuing to advance slowly, almost cautiously, like a half-wild animal. He couldn't say why, but he suddenly hated everything about this man, his untidy blond hair, the way his Adam's apple went up and down as he swallowed. Jack imagined cutting his throat, the Adam's apple splinter as he jammed a blade into it, the blond hair matted with blood. The expression on his face must have been terrible, because his would-be victim was pushing himself as far away as his narrow hospital bed would allow, his eyes wide with fear.

"Oh, don't be scared," Jack told him. His voice wasn't his own anymore. It was high and lilting, almost childlike—if you can imagine a child ripping a man's throat out with his bare hands, as this voice implied its owner was more than capable of doing.

The man tried to move even further away from this menacing man and his demon voice, forgetting that there was no more room for him to scoot backwards, and fell off the edge of the bed. He scrambled to his feet and continued to back away towards the wall, realizing to late that he was cornered. Jack raised an eyebrow, his hooked grin glittering like steel. "_That _was clumsy…"

And then suddenly he was upon him, his hands circling the other man's neck, and slowly tightening like an iron band. "Now I know you want to know how I got these scars," he breathed, his face very close to the man's ear, "you're just too shy to ask." He tilted his head back, smiling winningly at his choking victim. "So since I'm such a nice guy, I'll tell you anyway."

He opened his mouth, about to spill the whole stupid story to the dying man, because he wouldn't be able to tell anyone anyway, but something stopped him. It wasn't that it still hurt to talk about his wife; that feeling was long gone. She _had_ broken his heart, of course, but more than that. She had shattered it, ground it into a fine dust that had blown away in the wind, and now there was nothing left at all. It was oddly liberating to be heartless, though at first his numbness had frightened him. Now, though, Jack saw it as a good thing. Life was so much easier when you simply didn't care what happened to you. And he didn't anymore.

No, it wasn't grief over his lost love that made him pause, his dark eyes glinting with a sudden idea. It was creativity. Why tell the truth when making up a lie is so much more fun? He lifted hi eyes to the ceiling, as though trying to remember some pesky details.

"Hmm, well, I had a brother once. Jealous type. Real competitive, but not much to look at, to tell you the truth. Let's see… we both like this same girl. A _beautiful _girl, and she liked _me._" He paused to allow himself a sick smirk, his fingers steadily increasing their pressure on the man's throat. "You wouldn't know it now, but I used to be a pretty good-looking kid. _Handsome_. And, heh, _he_ wasn't. My brother. He was jealous of us—me and the girl… you know, I don't even remember her name?" He sighed. "_Any_way, he finds me alone in my room one day—we were just teenagers at the time. _Kids_. So he finds me, and, haha, he is _not_ happy. Not at all. He has a knife, and he overpowers me with it. He always was stronger than me—a skinny kid back then. So he takes the knife, and he carves my face open. And as I'm lying there, bleeding on the floor, he looks at me and says"—he shook his head, as though still unable to believe what had happened next—"he says: 'Now we match.' I knew what he meant. Now we were both _ugly._"

Jack looked back at the man pinned against the wall. "See? Wasn't that a funny story?"

But the man's eyes were wide and empty, and Jack realized that he was already dead.


	4. Chapter 4

_I was a bit unsure about how to go about writing this chapter, so I opted for the increasingly popular "innocent bystander pov" method. Let me know if it works. It's just the Joker (and I think our poor Mr J is more Joker than Jack by now) is a really hard character to write! Anyway, hope you enjoy. There will (probably) be just one more chapter after this, to tie things up._

The stainless steel pushcart had a squeaky wheel, the nurse noticed as she pushed it down the hallway, and it wobbled slightly, causing the two trays of food to rattle against its flat top. She ignored the noise, stepping briskly along the hall with the air that all practiced nurses seem to give off: that they are very busy, and that they will be kind and polite to their patients, but not to you, should you get in their way. In truth, this particular woman was feeling rather anxious, even frightened (though she was bravely trying to hide it by hurtling with increasing speed down the hallway.)

She had never met the long-term patient in Room 186, but she'd heard stories from some of the nurses who had. He never tried anything, like a few of the more troublesome men did, but she'd heard that he _looked_ at you. Not with the stupid, suggestive wiggle of an eyebrow that she'd grown used to, but with the closely focused intensity of a predator, coupled with the malevolent glee of a child with a new toy. A toy just waiting to be broken—pulled apart and banged on the floor until all the little plastic pieces fell out like entrails. The nurse shuddered, and she stopped at the door to Room 186, her hand resting firmly on the handle. _Let's just get this over with._

She opened the door and wheeled the cart bearing the two trays of food and her clipboard, into the room. The first patient, the one she'd been warned about, was seated on the edge of his bed, idly twiddling his thumbs in his lap. The other man lay tucked snugly into bed, and from this angle she couldn't see his face.

"Mr Wyatt? Mr Napier? I have your dinners here."

The seated man looked up, and she gulped at his expression: his scarred mouth stretched in a mocking grin, the light in his eyes seeming to flicker like an unsteady candle flame. "_Dinner?_ What're we having? Something good, I hope." He stood up and shambled towards the cart, and she resisted the urge to back away. "Soup! How dee-light-ful." He picked up his bowl and sat back down on the bed, lifting the spoon and taking a dainty sip. "Hmm."

"It's chicken noodle," she said, silently wondering why on earth she was trying to make conversation with this man.

"I see." He tossed aside the spoon, and poured the entire bowlful down his throat. "You know I heard that's supposed to be the best medicine… Or was that something else…?"

She ignored him, moving further into the room, and approaching the bed where the other man still lay motionless. "Mr Wyatt? I have your dinner."

Jack glanced over at her, his smirk underlined with malice. "Uh, he's not feeling too good, doc."

She frowned. "Why, what's wrong with"—her sentence was cut off by a sharp gasp that sounded almost like a scream. Mr Wyatt lay stiff and unmoving in his narrow cot, the blankets impeccably folded and tucked securely around him like a cocoon. His hands were folded on his chest and his eyes, as blank as marbles, stared unseeingly at the ceiling. He was dead.

She jumped back as if the air around him had scalded her, her voice shrill and breathless. "Oh my… what _happened_?"

Jack was now perched on the edge of his bed, leaning forward as though watching a particularly fascinating show. "Ah, an accident… Hey, can I have his soup?"

She shot him a horrified glance, but then turned back to the dead man in the bed, steeling herself. This wasn't the first corpse she'd seen, and she couldn't afford to be squeamish now. She moved forward and gingerly examined the body, searching for some clue of what might have caused his sudden death. It wasn't heard to find. Mr Wyatt's throat was bruised, the skin red and chafed. The woman's blood ran cold. She had worked in a shelter for battered women for a while, and seen the ones who'd come in after being beaten by their husbands. One girl in particular stood out in her memory; she had narrowly avoided being choked to death by a couple of thugs. The skin on her neck had been flushed and bruised. Just like this.

"You…"

There was a smashing noise behind her and she spun around. Shards of glass sparkled like ice on the tiles around Jack's feet—all that was left of the glass of water that had been standing on his bedside table. "Oops," he muttered, almost to himself, and bent to pick up a razor sharp fragment. It cut his hand, but he didn't let go. If anything, he gripped it harder, blood coloring the glass like red candy apple dye. She shivered when he smiled at her.

--

Molly was doodling a picture of an intricate maze on the corner of the sign-in sheet on her desk, when an almost comically synchronized chorus of gasps and shrieks from the rest of the lobby startled her out of her daydream. She looked up, and gasped too, a half-step behind everyone else.

The man in the center of the room glanced briefly at her, unconcerned, but then his eyes took in her desk, her shiny, laminated nametag, and the clipboard and pen she still held in her limp hand. His grin creased the half-healed scars on his cheeks, and the nurse in his grip opened her mouth to say something, but he stifled her with one hand, the other lightly tracing a bloody shard of broken glass over her jaw line. He shushed her like someone would a flighty horse, and turned back to Molly, who was sitting frozen with fear behind her desk.

"You're, ah, the receptionist, right?"

She nodded.

"Great!" He held his captive a little tighter as she made another half-hearted bid for freedom, and Molly could see the skin on her neck dimple where he pressed the glass a little harder. Soon it would break. "I, uh, need to check out of this _hospital_. I'm healthy enough to go home now!" She gulped. "So, if you could just… fill out the paperwork, or whatever it is you_ do_ here, both I and my _friend_ would be much obliged." He squeezed the woman against his chest in a weird kind of backwards hug, and the glass nicked her chin. Fresh blood ran onto the makeshift weapon, melting the already dried stains of it.

Molly's hand was shaking so much that the writing on the form was barely legible, but she figured it really didn't matter. She turned the clipboard around to face him, holding out her pen. "Just… just sign here."

The formality sounded absurd, but he took the pen in his left hand, keeping his hold on the terrified nurse with the other, and scribbled something at the bottom of the paper. He backed away slowly, dragging his hostage with him, and she thought she could hear fractured humming escaping his lips.

He stopped at the door and spun the poor woman around to face him, the splinter of glass still hovering by her face like a glittering wasp. "Hey, do you wanna know how I got these scars?" But before she could reply, he looked her up and down, frowning critically. "No," he said, "I don't suppose you do."

And then the shard of glass flashed across her throat, there was a wet spray of scarlet, the door slammed, and he was gone.

--

People were on their feet, whimpering, crying, screaming. They all crowded around the dead nurse, who lay in a pool of blood that was so red it looked fake, like a cheap Halloween decoration. But Molly couldn't move. She sat in her swivel-backed chair, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes staring straight ahead like the headlamps of a stalling car. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her, a thought that seemed suddenly like the most pressing thing in the world, and she spun the clipboard around to scan the form she had just filled out. Next to "Patient Signature", hastily scrawled in her blue ballpoint pen was a single letter: J.


	5. Chapter 5

_Last chapter! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, I really appreciate the support. So you can just assume that Jack has fully become the Joker between the end of the last chapter and now, makeup and all. I didn't want to go into too much detail with that, since the original purpose of this story was just the background with him and his wife. (Though I admit I got a bit carried away with the whole hospital thing.) Anyway, here it is, and I hope you've enjoyed it._

He always put on his makeup as quickly as possible. He didn't like being faced with his scarred, bare-skinned reflection when he glanced in the mirror. He didn't like looking like himself. Tonight, however, he took his time, carefully sponging the chalky white across his face, tracing his eyes with black and filling them in so that at first glance, the sockets appeared to be empty—just dark holes in his head. His smile, though it looked like blood, wasn't. He'd learned that blood dried brown, and so he used children's face paint instead. That was funny. Wasn't it?

Wiping his fingers on the inside of his jacket, he pulled on his gloves and stepped back to examine himself in the cracked mirror. His eyes stared from blackened pits in his white face, and his grin glistened like a blood-slicked sickle moon. His hair was stringy, turning green at the tips, as though it grew that way. He was almost unrecognizable. Almost.

Quickly, he looked his reflection up and down. His suit was clean. There were six different kinds of knives, a handgun, and three homemade explosives tucked into his pockets. His face was artfully coated and smeared with cheap face paint. He was ready. The clown winked at his reflection, and then with a last smirk, he turned and left the room.

--

The heater had broken down last week, and she could practically see her breath in the air when she sighed, but she could hardly bring herself to care. The cold didn't bother her. Not much did, anymore. And anyway, she had since grown used to it, and now had an abundance of sweaters strewn across the floor and furniture where she would drop them, and pick them up again as need dictated.

Now, she dropped her bag on the floor and started to reach for a green woolly thing draped over the back of a chair, but then suddenly stopped. Her hand was still outstretched, trembling as memory started, sharp and unbidden in her throat. It had been _his_, the sweater. How on earth had she forgotten that? She picked up the garment very carefully, as though it were composed of cobwebs, and held it close to her face, though she kept the material from touching her skin. She had expected it to smell like him, and maybe it still did, but she realized she wouldn't be able to tell—all she could smell now when she thought of him was blood, coursing down his face and dripping onto the floor from those two horrible rips he had made in his cheeks.

She moved the sweater away from her face, but kept it hugged to her chest. She didn't regret leaving him—at least, she didn't regret leaving the madman he'd become—but lately she'd been thinking more and more of how he used to be, before everything had broken apart in her hands like an empty eggshell. He used to be so serious, she remembered, always worrying about their jobs, their money, how they were going to get by on this month's income. He used to frown in his sleep, or unconsciously, when he was concentrating, and she always used to tease him for it. He had been beautiful, too, with thoughtful dark eyes and a smooth, angular face. She often wondered why he stayed with her. Ironic then, that in the end, it was _she_ who'd left _him._

But even though she was the one who'd ended it, she'd never quite been able to move on. She told herself it was because no one would have her anyway, with her scarred face and capricious temper, but really, she'd never even tried to find someone after Jack. It would feel like a betrayal, being with anyone else. She knew that it was stupid to still be in love with the man he used to be—he was gone now. That knife had drained his old self away as surely as it had all that blood that she still thought of, pooling on the bedroom floor. She felt like a widow, because the Jack she knew was dead, and someone… _else_ had taken his place—someone she wanted nothing to do with.

With a sigh, she pulled on the sweater and sat down in the chair, flipping on the TV. Gotham's dashing new DA spoke to her sternly from the screen, promising to bring the clever new head of the Falcone crime family to justice. She sank back in the chair and watched him gesticulate and make serious expressions without really hearing his words. There had been plenty of enthusiastic young politicians before him, and they had all been quickly brought down to earth when they got a firsthand look at Gotham's corrupt inner workings. This man would be no different. Lazily, she lifted the remote and muted the TV, so Harvey Dent's mouth kept moving, but she was surrounded by chilly silence.

Suddenly, there was the clatter of something small being dropped on the linoleum floor behind her, and she leapt up and turned around to find its source.

There was someone standing in her kitchen—a _male_ someone, but to call him a man seemed a gross understatement, somehow. He seemed hardly even human. His clothes were like nothing she'd ever seen before—a great swagger of a coat, vibrant purple, over pinstriped trousers and a green, buttoned waistcoat. Alone, the outfit might have looked comical, but then her eyes fell on his face, and her smile died before it even touched her lips. His rough skin was smeared with white paint, like curdled milk, and black from his ringed eyes spiderwebbed across hit, giving the illusion of cracks in his face. An exaggerated smile was splashed across his mouth, glistening like fresh blood.

He seemed to sense her horrified stare, and looked up from the pencil he'd just dropped on the floor, tilting his head to peer at her. "How's it going?"

She wanted to run away, to scream, to stumble back from the grinning terror that stood so calmly before her. He seemed profoundly out of place there in the apartment, like a cut out photograph held up against the stark backdrop of real life. But all she could do was stand and gape, while fear spread its feather-light cloak across her shoulders. Who would have thought that a clown could cut such a menacing figure?

He took a step forward, his hands spread genially. "Don't tell me you don't remember me, sugar. Here… c'mere…" And suddenly his garishly painted face was inches from hers, and his gloved hand was tight on the back of her neck, pulling her close to him. In spite of her terror, she was confused. Remember him? When had she _ever_ met a man like _this_? Her eyes scoured his face again, though he was almost painful to look upon at such close proximity, and suddenly she gasped. _No…_ Underneath the wet red paint, his cheeks were damaged, the skin rippling around two wickedly curving scars, like a _smile_.

Her voice broke in disbelief. "J-_Jack?_ Is that… _you_?"

A sick grin smeared itself across his face and she winced at his yellow teeth. There was just no way… "Why… why are you wearing makeup?"

His laughter exploded from his chest without warning, pitching sharply out of control. A chill traced down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold apartment. He finally stopped laughing long enough to choke out: "I have no idea what you're talking about, dar-_ling_. This is my _real face._"

Her mind was still rebelling against this entire horrifying situation. This couldn't—_couldn't_ be her husband. She forced herself to meet his eyes again. They were still dark, but there was a wildness in them that reminded her of a rabid animal—vicious, mad, and utterly without reason. If she looked close enough, though, she could almost see Jack Napier under the makeup, in the curve of his cheekbone, the shape of his mouth, stretched as it was by his new scars. Before she could stop herself, she raised a hand to trace the delicate filigree of torn flesh along his cheeks. "Your scars…"

He stiffened as her skin grazed his. There was a time when he had yearned for her touch, but now it only made him sick. "What about them?"

She faltered, not sure of what she had been going to say. "Do they… still hurt?"

He chuckled again, and it reminded her of the sound of a firearm being loaded. "_These_ old things? Oh nonono." Suddenly, a blade she hadn't realized he'd been holding was pushed between her lips, into her mouth. It was flat and cool on her tongue, but the keen edge bit into the inside of her cheek, and she tasted blood. His black eyes met hers, and suddenly they were utterly inhuman once again. "No, they only _hurt_… when I _smile._"

--

He licked the blade clean as he made his way back downstairs. Her blood was salty on his tongue, just like everyone else's. Outside the apartment building, he nodded to his two masked henchmen who stood by the door. He was done here. They set off across the parking lot and he followed them quickly, shoving the knife back into his pocket, and slicking back his greening hair with one palm. He had a little fundraiser to attend.


End file.
